National disgrace

Well, I’ve written a lot about Barry Bonds (like, no duh eh?); however it’s time to discuss some truly evil, purulent folks in MLB.

You see, like many I have read Game of Shadows and feel fairly comfortable in stating that Bonds wouldn’t be the one you would want to represent humanity in front of Kang and Kodos to justify our continued existence. Part of Bonds’ problems has a lot to do with his environment and upbringing.

The man rarely heard the word “no” and his athletic ability allowed him to get away with behavior that would cause severe consequences (or at least several bloody noses) to be imposed on anyone not possessing some financially lucrative talent that can be exploited for obscene profits.

The end result—Bonds’ personality is fairly predictable all things considered.

But I digress.

The reason I don’t get overly worked up over it is simple: he’s a lightweight when it comes to truly slimy individuals within the game. Today, we will look at the most recent example:

The Washington Nationals—and I ain’t talkin’ Elijah Dukes either. He’s nasty to be sure but he’s a thug and proud of it but his ability to inflict misery doesn’t compare with those who are signing his paychecks.

I’m speaking of team ownership and its Selig-like unbridled greed and complete lack of humanity and perspective. Bonds had no control over how he was brought up, whereas these folks’ adipoceral-laden consciences are the result of deliberate, premeditated ideas, thought processes and decision making.

Right now, times are tough for everyday folks; fuel prices are soaring and pulling up costs of other goods and services along with them. Things are getting harder and harder for people to make ends meet. There are cuts to education, cuts to health services, cuts to services needed by those least able to defend themselves: children (cue Helen Lovejoy).

While it’s been popular to rip welfare recipients, especially since the days of Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” remarks back in the 1980s, cuts to these programs affect children who aren’t trying to abuse the system. For those taken away from parents disinterested in looking after their responsibilities there are programs that are often under-funded, and many kids fall through the cracks.

The education systems in many metropolitan areas are in poor shape with inadequate funding for everything from books and school equipment to support staff and other needed professionals in these difficult times.

In this environment the major league cartel demanded $611 million of money that could be allocated to services such as these for MLB to set up shop in D.C.

It has been common knowledge for a while now that communities that build publicly financed stadiums for professional sports teams do not derive any real financial benefit from so doing. In the case of cities such as Minnesota and St. Louis stadiums are only 15 years old or less and not even fully paid for before teams have their avarice-oozing hands out for more handouts. (Welfare for billionaires but not children?)

Despite this one-way financial relationship that benefits a super-wealthy minority over the financially struggling majority—these love children of engorged, insatiable financial leeches and fiscal succubi are still not satiated.

An old Jewish proverb states: “Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.”

That 3000-year-old statement remains as true today as it did then.

One would think well over a half billion smackers of free money plus the generated revenues that would ordinarily be used to offset costs of construction, maintenance, amortization and the like would be good enough for these bottomless pits.

Guess again—these guys are the proverbial Casanova—they’re just looking to get into your pants (pockets in this case), but once you’ve given up yourself for them don’t expect them to respect you in the morning.

Claiming that the ballpark that they didn’t pay for but get to keep the lion’s share of the revenues for wasn’t completed in time—not only are they not paying their rent ($3.5 million … a little more than what they’re paying Chad Cordero on the 60-day DL), they’re demanding $100,000 a day in damages dating back to the beginning of March ($14.5 million as of this writing).

Did they play in RFK opening day? Have any regular season games been moved to RFK? Evidently the team thought it was sufficiently complete to open to the paying public and begin collecting revenues. What they’re saying is that it was complete enough to begin using for earning profits but not complete enough to feel that they’re obligated to pay rent. It was complete enough to be able to utilize all the new revenue steams but not complete enough to the point of where they feel they’ve suffered almost $15 million in monetary damages.

(shakes head)

Their actions trumpet their despicable attitude: Screw services for the needy, who cares that the people paying taxes expect those revenues to be used for services that are to be allocated for the public good … $611 million is not enough—not only are we not going to pay rent, we want you to pay us for playing in the ballpark that they didn’t pay for but get to keep the lion’s share of the revenues.

We don’t care who this hurts, we don’t care who has to do without, we don’t care if this creates additional hardships for the needy—even though we’re obscenely wealthy we expect those hurting, needy folks with very little to foot the bill and subsidize our greed.

Can you believe these people?

As I stated in May, the whole lot of them should be rounded up and stuffed into a time machine set to 1789 Paris when they knew how to deal with people like them. Since they may struggle with the language we’ll send along some bilingual baseball fans from Quebec to help them adjust. Never forget, these are the ones who decry “greedy players;” the players only want to paid what their talents are worth to the game. The owners want to be paid even though insofar as the public good goes, they are completely worthless and do not wish to work for their money.

They want it to be given to them with no strings attached.

They may be the only people of whom Satan holds multiple mortgages on their soul (why he would want them in the first place is debatable … maybe he likes role models and has new depths to which he wishes to sink—all he needs is someone to show him the way).

The major league cartels are out of control; they abuse their monopoly power to the detriment of society at large.

At least D.C. is fighting back, threatening to raise the sales tax of items sold at the ballpark (it is a public facility—and if you knock the “L” out of it you’ve described the primary tenants) that would cut into club revenues. Personally, I like Baseball Think Factory Dan Szymborski’s suggestion to announce that all the roads surrounding the ballpark sorely require major maintenance. In order to minimize public inconvenience the project will be spread over 30-odd days, in four-hour blocks from either 7:00-11:00 p.m. or 1:30-5:30 p.m., depending on the day of the week. It would merely be a coincidence that those times would coincide with Nationals’ home games—c’est la guerre.

This would hit them where it hurts—after all, MLB tells us that a publicly financed stadium is all that is needed for an attendance spike. What’s that? The Nats are 13th in NL attendance? But, but, we’ve been told that mallparks are a major draw and an economic boom to a region—they wouldn’t lie to us would they?

Of course they would—it’s what they do, as I stated last week…

The men who feel this way have denied communities tens of billions of dollars in tax money that could be used for schools, libraries, children’s shelters and services and the like in order to enrich themselves even further, have had no qualms about presenting deliberate misinformation to the federal government (read: lying) about the effectiveness of their drug testing program and their economic condition, lied to local governments about the financial benefits that would be theirs for investing in a new ballpark, defied democracy, looked the other way as players felled records through the use of performance-enhancing drugs, colluded repeatedly and deliberately not put their best efforts into assembling winning rosters…

Why regions still get into bed with these thoroughly corrupt monopolists is beyond me—if you lie down with a dog you will get fleas. Lie down with Bud’s cartel and you will get screwed in the non-Biblical sense of the word.

These are the ones who think Barry Lamar Bonds is too evil to employ? As I said before, Bonds is a lightweight compared to these guys. I know which one I’d like to see removed from the sport for life.

One more time!

Take me out to the Bud-park
Take me out to get screwed
We built their park with rev-en-ue streams
It’s just the start of our get-ting reamed
Since they root-root-root through our pockets
If they miss a dime it’s a shock
For it’s one, two, three hundred clams
At the old Bud-park!